Apple and HTC have apparently had enough of patent trolling one another as the companies reached a global settlement on current lawsuits and licensing.

According to a joint statement, all current lawsuits between the two are to be dismissed. The settlement also includes a ten year licensing agreement for these and future patents by the companies, but there’s not much else to go by since actual terms are confidential.

The two started out with what turned out to be a long and dragged out exchange of legal blows back in March 2010. Apple was the first to point a finger at HTC, but the latter responded already in May.

HTC’s CEO Peter Chou said that HTC is glad the dispute has been resolved since it can now focus on “innovation rather than litigation”. Apple’s CEO Tim Cook said pretty much the same thing, so we guess it has just been a bad dream and nobody was patent trolling to begin with. Now both go to your rooms and think about your actions.

Finally, Microsoft and Turn 10 Studios have been able to achieve an agreement with Electronic Arts that will see Porsche cars come to Forza 4. EA, who owns the rights for the use of the Porsche cars in video games, would originally not work out a deal with Microsoft and developer Turn 10 so that Porsche cars could appear in Forza 4.

An agreement has finally been reached; and as a result Forza 4 will get a Porsche expansion pack that will add 30 new Porsche models, including 7 new models that have never been in any previous Forza game. In addition, the Porsche pack will add 20 new events for the World Tour mode, which should add an estimated 5 more hours of game play. The pack will offer 10 new Achievements worth a total of 250 points.

While the final lineup of cars has yet to be confirmed by Turn 10, we know that many favorites will, of course, be a part of the DLC offering when it arrives this May. Pricing has yet to be announced, but it is expected that this expansion pack may cost more than the typical car pack offerings that Turn 10 has released up to this point.

According to sources, EA never wanted to block Forza 4 from offering Porsche cars in the game. Instead, EA wanted to find a deal that contained the right terms that gave equity to the license. It was more of a matter of getting the licensing deal done between the two companies that both offer driving games.

Apple has won the right to keep its computers free of rival operating systems. Circuit Judge Mary Schroeder wrote in her opinion that Apple's Mac OS X licensing agreement was indeed enforceable against Psystar, which had sold non-Mac computers with Mac OS X installed.

Psystar claimed that the OS X licensing agreement was an "unlawful attempt to extend copyright protection to products that are not copyrightable."The Ninth Circuit chucked that idea out.

Pystar had been making hacktintoshes which ran OSx until Apple sued the outfit. In late 2009, US District Judge William Alsup ruled that Psystar violated Apple's copyrights when distributing Mac OS X with its machines.

The ruling is important for Apple because it means that it is legally justfied in keeping its oppressing control freak business model with its closed ecosystem. It means that the company can keep technological controls to ensure that only approved applications are used in connection with the operating systems.

It seems that the close relationship between AMD and its off-shoot Global Foundries has changed with things getting down to something resembling a proper business agreement.

It looks like Global Foundries had been given the lee-way of being paid by AMD even if the chips it made didn't work. Now the pair have changed the agreement covering chips made on 32 nanometer and included in the agreement was the somewhat reasonable demand that AMD only pay for chips that go.

The revision is intended to give Global Foundries an incentive to improve production of 32-nanometer chips this year. Under their previous deal, AMD paid for all chips produced at cost of production plus a markup for Global Foundries.

AMD estimates it will pay Global Foundries $1.1 billion to $1.5 billion in 2011 and $1.5 billion to $1.9 billion in 2012 for outsourced manufacturing. That compares with about $1.2 billion in 2010. AMD is also the biggest customer of Global Foundries, which Abu Dhabi created out of manufacturing operations it bought from AMD and Singapore’s Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd. in 2009.

The new agreement increases AMD’s commitment to having new processors with built-in graphics capabilities manufactured by Global Foundries, the statement said. AMD currently uses Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing to make some of its graphics products.